There’s so many things to feel and see while you’re awake…

Don Van Vliet / Captain BeefheartCombining elements of free jazz, blues and rock, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band produced what is commonly regarded by critics and fans as one of rock’s few truly original bodies of work.

Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) retired from the music industry after 1982’s Ice Cream For Crow album to concentrate on his primary love – paint.

The Radar Station is a purely fan-run site which aims to document every twist and turn in the tale of this unique individual.

Header photograph copyright Anton Corbijn, used with kind permission.

Don Van Vliet: 1941-2010 – tributes and fond farewells

Recent blog posts

By:
On:
In: Blog, Music
With: 1 Comment

Thanks to the tireless work of the group dedicated to scouring recordings of John Peel radio shows for musical rarities a previously unknown version of Mirror Man has been discovered. Found on the tape of John’s show from Sunday 21st January 1968 was a good quality recording of Yellow Brick Road from the Safe As Milk album rather than taken from the band’s first Top Gear session which wasn’t recorded until three days later, and is introduced by Don himself who was obviously in the studio with John. At the end of Yellow Brick Road it cuts into an astonishing version of Mirror Man !Read More →

By:
On:
In: Music, Safe As Milk, Tributes
With: 0 Comments

On Friday 29th August 2025 Robyn Hitchcock performed the Safe As Milk album live at The Chapel, San Francisco. A second set Deep Cuts & Classic Tracks  included a selection of other Beefheart songs from the later albums. The musical director for the show was Allyson Baker from the San Francisco rock band Dirty Ghosts. She and her husband played a couple of Beefheart songs with Robyn Hitchcock at The Chapel in May 2025 – Electricity and Zig Zag Wanderer – and enjoyed the experience so much that they wanted to do it again. By coincidence the promoter of the show that night had anRead More →

By:
On:
In: Blog, Life, Music
With: 0 Comments

This is the back story behind the previously unknown song “White Powdered Wigs”, originally co-written in 1968 by Don Van Vliet and Peter Anders, who was then part of the duo Anders and Poncia. Don had mentioned back in early 1968 (Melody Maker 3 Feb 1968 – Those Beefheart Blues … by Tony Wilson) that he had written a song with Peter, saying in an interview, “I wrote a song with Pete Anders. I also wrote another one called ‘Fifth Dimensional Judy’. We physically love England” but no details or confirmation had ever emerged about the track until now. He had also mentioned in laterRead More →